


One Sweet Melody

by sirachamuchacha



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Regan Week 2017, a lil dark in the beginning, but not in the end, its STILL regan week mothertruckers, very sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 13:25:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11601558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirachamuchacha/pseuds/sirachamuchacha
Summary: For Day 3 of Regan Week!





	One Sweet Melody

**Author's Note:**

> Title of this work was taken from a line in the song 'Judy' by Al Green... I encourage you all to listen to it bc it's one of my fav songs atm and I can shamelessly say I've been trying to find ways to use this song in a fic and I've finally found my time.  
> I hope you all enjoy and don't forget to support and celebrate all of the great Regan material that is being shared!

For the longest time, when Negan thought of the word family, words like _broken_ and  _abandoned_ were the first things that came to mind. Negative, dark words, to say the very least- but who could blame him when he grew up in a family like the one he had?

He was an unplanned child born to some forced-to-be-wed high school graduates- Mary: a young and sweet, respectable lady who had plans of going to Julliard to pursue her dreams of becoming a concert pianist, and Joe: a young man who was just that, and nothing more- in a red neck town in Washington during the late sixties.

And despite the times, the free love movement never really made it anywhere besides California. Every other place was not as forgiving, not as laid back.

He knew from very early on that his parents were not in love- maybe they were at some point before Negan was around, but he never got the chance to see it- and stayed together at first only for the sake of their child and their reputation.

They had their wedding only a couple months after his mother had found out she was pregnant, because _Oh, dearie!_ _Oh my!_ What would the neighbors think if they saw sweet ole Mary all barefoot and pregnant with no husband to her teenaged name?

But then after a while, the name-saving wore loose, and his parents got a divorce when he was eight years old. Or maybe he was nine; the older he gets, the harder it is to remember, but the pain of it all never seemed to dull as quickly as the sharpness of his brain.

His world, as small and unvaried as it had been at that meager age, had all but crumbled until it was nothing but thin dust and weathered debris at the feet of his young soul.

And nothing was ever the same after that.

But it was fun for a while, when he was too young to understand the half of it.

Twice the gifts at Christmas, two different places to call home, his parents overcompensating with love and toys and anything else they could give their only son that they guiltily pitied. Never mind that his mother was struggling to put food on the table, or that his father was spiraling into the depths of alcoholism. At the time, it was all fun and games.

Until one day, after he'd become bored with it all and after his parents stopped trying to pay him back in material and hugs and kisses, he’d asked his mom, “Mom, when's Dad coming home?”

He remembers her dead eyed stare, boring into his innocent gaze as she looked down at him and responded with a cold and merciless, “Never.”

Next thing he knows, his Mother stops playing piano and strange men start coming over on a nightly basis, only to leave in the morning.

His father remarries, and in a years time he learns he's going to be having a step sister, when he doesn't even like his own step mother. (In restrospect, she was a nice lady and all. He really should've cut her some slack, but try as she might, all he saw her as was another hurdle in his way of getting his Mom and Dad back together.)

He starts middle school, he hits puberty, he feels so lonely and misunderstood with no way of knowing how to express those feelings in a healthy way.

So he lashes out at school, reciting strong, foul mouthed remarks he’d heard the night prior on some late-night television series just for attention, getting into playground fights and teasing other innocent children.

It was phone call after phone call to his mother and then his father, mother and then father, mother and then father.

He tried so hard to do something grand enough that they'd both have to be in the principal's office at the same time, but nothing could induce that- not even stabbing a kid in the hand with a freshly sharpened, number 2 pencil.

He stopped trying at everything after that. He didn't bother trying at school, just copied and cheated as much as he could, but that wasn't enough and he dropped out his Senior year when he found out he didn't have all the credits needed to graduate. He didn't bother trying to get people to like him, whether they were his parents or his teachers or his peers at school. He didn't bother trying to find love in anything, not a person or a hobby or a thing.

He shoplifted liquor and vandalized buildings, jumped from his mothers to his father's house, until they couldn't stand him and sent him from Aunt to Uncle, until _they_ couldn't stand him, and sent him out on the streets.

Those were his lowest points, jumping from couch to couch, pursuing one night stands just for the sake of having a place to sleep at night.

But in that muck, he found something gold. He found Lucille.

It was 1989 and she was the lead singer of a punk girl band that helped birth the _'riot grrrl'_ movement and loved to get high on anything she could find. They were drawn to each other like magnets and when she found out he was homeless, she let him stay at her place and taught him how to play guitar, his first instrument.

Through her he found his love for music, and the first love of his life.

By then he had an idea of what love was. He saw it in movies and on TV, all the hand holding and secret telling and kissing.

He knew that he and Lucille were in love, but at the time he didn't know that there were so many kinds of love.

Some are temporary and some last. Some are gentle and some are destructive.

Who's to know which are real and which are not?

Lucille died sometime later from a heroin overdose, and in his grief and desperation, he was forced to go back to his mother.

He hadn't expected her to take him back, but she did, and he found out why.

“I’m dying,” she told him, with a sad smile pulling the lines that have grown to settle in her skin. She seemed to have come to terms with it. “I have cancer.”

She started playing the piano again as one last hoorah, and Negan always enjoyed watching her intensity as she performed. It was something she carried even when she thought no one was watching.

By the time they'd found out her illness was terminal, she had taught Negan everything she'd known about the black and white keys she spent her life loving. (Even now Negan can't capture his mother’s energy in his playing, but he’ll spend the rest of his life trying.)

On her deathbed, worn down to skin and bone, but still resilient, she said to him, “For years I wondered why this happened to me, why this was my life… Why did I marry Joe? Why did I have his kid? I realize now that this had to happen. You had to be born.”

Negan never got to ask her how exactly she knew that, but on days where everything was just too much, too dark, he held onto her words like a promise.

And one day, many hard years later when he'd made a stable life for himself in Seattle, giving piano lessons to neighborhood kids, he met a teenager named Carl Grimes who reminded him too much of himself when he was his age.

Out of pure concern and a deep rooted sympathy, he reached out to the boy’s parents- only to find there was just one.

“He’s been getting in a lot of trouble at school ever since.. ever since his mother passed,” those were the first words Rick had ever spoken to him, “I- the family therapist said something like piano lessons might help discipline him.” He looked to be on his last hope, blue eyes filled to the brim with distress, dressed with worried lines between his brows.

He was hopeless enough to confide in a stranger, and those confidences became mutual, sooner or later, and turned into a much bigger thing.

It was a rough transition, going from being alone to being with someone after years and years of solitude.

Carl was resistant, and Negan couldn't blame him. He remembers the years of trouble he'd given when his own father had remarried, even if it had made him happy.

He's lucky that Carl was a good enough kid to be able to see that, see that his father was happy. He's a good kid. Way tougher than Negan was. He's tough enough to accept love no matter what it comes in.

Judith, on the other hand, being as young as she was when Negan came into the picture, was as accepting as one could ever ask another to be. Negan was head over heels for her in no less than a minute, and it didn't take long for her to start calling him Papa.

Now they all live under the same roof, and Rick, the truest love he's ever had, trusts him well enough to have him stay at home with his five year old daughter and nurse her heinous case of the sniffles while he's off at the station.

It was no fight, the little girl has become just as much Negan's child as she is Rick’s.

But while the neighborhood kids can wait a day for their piano lessons, that doesn't mean Negan can stay away from his music for that long.

After Judy's been napping for a while, and the house is quiet and unmoving from the lack of people, Negan grows restless and puts on an old Al Green record.

He remembers his mother anticipating the release of this album, buying it, and playing it day in and day out. It was one of the happier moments of his childhood. He must've been five years old, no older than Judith.

He's sitting at the piano, lazily transcribing the music that pours into his ears when a small, sweet voice meets his ears.

“Papa, can you make me a peanut butter and jelly?”

Negan's fingers halt on the keys, and he turns his head to see the little girl, pajamas and blonde hair ruffled, eyes half shut with sleep. She's getting so big, it nearly brings Negan to tears.

“Sure honey,” Negan answers, getting up from the bench just as Judith gravitates towards the record player in the corner. Sometimes Negan will find her just staring at the record when it spins on the turntable, encased by the movement- or  catch her putting her small toys on the plate to watch them go around in circles. Other times she'll just lie on the floor like deadweight (scaring the shit out of both of her fathers on multiple occasions) and listen to the music until she falls asleep. “You feelin’ any better?”

She hums a sure reply, and then asks, “Where's Carl?”

“He's at school, honey.”

“Oh yeah,” she says, and Negan watches in amusement as she grabs the record sleeve that he'd left on the floor, “Who's this, papa?” She points to the suave looking man donning a suede bomber jacket on the cover, “He's handsome.”

Negan can't help the wheeze that comes out of him, Judith innocently joins him in his laughter.

“Slow down, cowgirl,” he laughs, “you've still got a-ways to go.”

He goes over to the girl, squatting down beside her as she retires to the floor, all the while still studying the album cover.

Negan watches in anticipation as she turns it to the back and begins reading over the tracklist, waiting for her to see what he knows will excite her.

“Hey!” She exclaims pointing her tiny finger at a track titled _Judy,_ “That's me!”

Negan smiles so hard it nearly cuts his vision. “You're darn right it is.”

“Put it on, papa, put it on!”

“Alright, alright,” Negan says, feigning exasperation as the two of them get to their feet.

Judith gets on her tip toes, watching with fascination in her big, youthful eyes as Negan drops the needle perfectly on the desired line.

The music begins, and they both retire to the floor this time, sitting cross legged and staring up at the record player like the music is something that can be seen as well as heard.

Maybe it can be.

When the words come in, Negan sees them so clearly, playing out his life and all the warmth he's managed to gather despite  his many misfortunes.

_I never thought dreams could happen_

_Until one came true for me_

_Since I met Judy_

_Since I met Judy_

_Ah, my life has been one sweet melody_

Judith beams at every mention of her name, and by the end of the song, she has a permanent, dopey grin drawn out on her face.

“That was really cool,” Judith comments, simple words that hold honest meaning.

“That _was_ pretty cool, huh?”

“Papa, when are you going to teach me how to play piano? You taught Carl, now teach me.”

“You wanna learn?” He asks, and she nods fervently. “Alright then,” he says, “get your tush to the bench.”

Negan blinks an eyes and she's already halfway to the piano. He, on the other hand, is taking his time, trying not to throw his back out.

He's gonna be fifty soon. He never thought he'd see that age.

He sits beside Judy on the bench, letting her take care of the higher octaves while he accompanies the lower tones.

Since her hands are still pretty small and she has a fleeting mind, he decides to make today's lesson short and sweet.

“Okie dokie,” he begins, getting his posture right as he sinks more comfortably into his seat, readying his fingers to come across the keys, “All I want you to do today is just touch the key. You've done that before right?”

“Mhm!” She nods, before she sticks a finger out and bops a key right on the nose.

It lets out a gentle chime.

“Ok, now hit it harder.”

She does, and the sound grows in volume.

She looks up at him in wonder.

“See how when you hit it harder, it gets louder?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now hit it even harder, like you're _really_ freakin’ P.O’d.”

She does as she's told, even if she hits a few other keys in the process, and the sound echoes into the vastness of the living room.

“Now hit it soft and quick, like you don't wanna wake it up, cause it's sleeping.”

She does as she's told, and the sound it emits is a quick peak of light.

She smiles up at Negan, waiting for his next instruction.

“Now hit it hard again.”

She does it.

“Now soft.”

She does it.

“Now hard.”

She does it.

“Now keep doing that until you get a feel of the keys.”

She goes on for who knows how long like that- a peep and then a crash, a peep and then a crash- until the front door opens, bringing in a quick, thick burst of light and a handsome man in full uniform.

“What's goin’ on in here?” Rick asks teasingly, using that authoritative Sheriff tone, as he makes his way into the room.

He gives Negan a quick peck on the lips before he goes to plant a kiss on the top of Judith's head.

Negan watches, absolutely smitten, as he gets the girl in his arms and takes her spot on the bench before replacing her in his lap.

“I'm learning, Daddy!” She happily informs him, “Listen!”

She continues her song of peep _CRASH!_ peep _CRASH!_ until she figures he's gotten a good enough idea

“Sounds good, sweetheart.” Rick laughs, looking over at Negan.

Negan shrugs, unable to tear his eyes away from Rick now that he's home. “She learns from the best,” he says with a wink.

Rick shakes his head fondly, a goofy smile blossoming onto his lips. .

“You're home early,” Negan states, talking over Judith as she continues playing a different tune of her own.

Rick smiles lazily, answering with, “Slow day at the office.” He looks down at his watch, and then asks, “You picked up Carl yet?”

“Not yet. He doesn't get out for another thirty minutes.”

Rick considers that, and Negan watches as he builds an idea behind his eyes. “Maybe we could all go,” Rick suggests, “Get some ice cream after or somethin’?”

Negan smiles, nodding, “Or somethin’.”

-

Later on in life, when he and Rick are old and rickety, when Carl's starting his own family and Judith is off studying music at Julliard, Negan understands his Mother’s last words to him.

He was meant to be born so he could be apart of these kid's lives.

Apart of _Rick's_ life.

Apart of this family.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Have a very happy Regan week! :)


End file.
